3°o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



pocket but his own. In fact, in Russia as elsewhere, 

 and among popes no less than among other people, 

 the man of convivial habits is apt to be at the bottom 

 a generous soul. 



As a class the popes are cordially despised by the 

 Russian people. The peasantry regards them not as spir- 

 itual fathers, but as corrupt agents of the Church, just 

 as the police and the hordes of officials who prey upon 

 them are corrupt agents of the government. One set 

 are disreputable tools of the Church, the others of the 

 Czar. Both Church and Czar they reverence, but they 

 expect nothing but extortion and corrupt practices 

 from the minions of either. Among the peasants the 

 worst-hated minions of the civil government are our 

 friends of a previous chapter, the uriadniks, a horde of 

 nearly 6000 rural police, who, in 1878, were let loose 

 among them with almost unbridled powers of petty 

 persecution. The uriadnik has become a byword 

 among the people, and on a par with him, in the esti- 

 mation of the moujiks, is what is known among them as 

 the " merchant pope." 



For a drunken, dissolute clergyman, the moujiks 

 have no special aversion, because in their eyes drunk- 

 enness, even in a priest, is no sin, and as before stated 

 they trouble themselves little about what does not af- 

 fect their own pockets. It is because the practices of 

 the " merchant pope " do affect their pockets that they 

 hold him in special abhorrence above others of the 

 cloth. 



The " merchant pope " is a priest who is forever 

 scheming to extort money from his parishioners. His 

 ways of reaching their pockets are multifarious, and his 



